BRIDGET JONES’S BABY

I can’t associate myself so doggedly with a romcom rooted in everything cliched about the noughties, but it’s hard to escape the fact that Bridget Jones’s Baby is a bloody good film.

The fun starts at 43 for Bridget Jones. Single once again, she elects to live life to the full. A summer of festival fun – and naughty reunions – leaves Bridget ‘up the duff’, as her co-workers aptly put it. Who’s the father? HE’S BEHIND Y-*cough* Poor Bridget doesn’t know. Clue: it’s either billionaire American or tall, handsome, recently-single ex… Oh, the agony of choice.

Renee Zellweger is just pitch perfect in the lead. Revisiting a character isn’t as easy as it sounds, but she takes it on and goes further, creating a modern Bridget. Colin Firth evolves his character, Mark Darcy, appropriately too. As Dr Rawlings, Emma Thompson makes the best comedy supporting appearance in years. Impeccable timing, and humour as dry as the Sahara, both character and actor are a great addition.

I was impressed by the commitment to quirky camerawork. Better yet, economical editing gives the film an active flow – there is never a dull moment – and the direction tries to be inventive. Above all, the fun hasn’t aged one bit. It’s a funny film that appeals to all adults but never slips from the true heart of girly comradeship that embodies the series.

Script anomalies include a hypocritical revenge speech on the hipster youth (despite gloriously shutting down her mum’s 1950s mantra) and the fact that the American dude (Dempsey) is a stranger. Either go all out for the money or don’t, otherwise it’s creepy. Thankfully, the bold move to shrug off the old noughties idioms, fashion and ideologies pays off big time. Here’s a fresh new Bridget: new waistline, new friends, and new job – wonderful.

Hip to a new generation; continued adoration from the fun-mum crew; approving partners of the male kind – this is a threequel that squeezes the last ounce of goodness from a dying breed of romcom.